Eugenia: Name Day and Patron Saint

St Eugenia was a Roman by birth who grew up in Alexandria, where her father Philip had been sent by the emperor as Prefect of Egypt. Reading the Epistles of St Paul, she came to long for the Christian faith and kept it hidden from her parents. With two servants, Protus and Hyacinth, she left home dressed in men’s clothing, was baptized by Bishop Elias, and lived in a monastery as a monk under the name Eugene, receiving from God the gift of healing. When a rich woman named Melanthia, whom she had refused, falsely accused her, Eugenia was tried before her own father and had to reveal who she was. Her parents and brothers were baptized. Philip was chosen bishop by the Christians of Alexandria; the new prefect sent men to attack him while he prayed, and he died of his wounds three days later. Eugenia’s mother Claudia then took the family to Rome, where Eugenia led many young women to Christ. In a later persecution she was thrown into the Tiber with a stone at her neck and cast into fire, and came through both unharmed. After ten days in a pit, the Saviour appeared and promised she would enter His Kingdom on the day of His Nativity, and on that feast she was beheaded. The Church keeps her memory with her father Philip on 24 December (6 January on the Old Calendar). The faithful ask her prayers for the young who seek Christ, for those falsely accused, and for families brought to faith together.

What the faithful pray for

• young people seeking Christ against their family’s wishes
• those who are falsely accused
• monastics and those drawn to the monastic life
• families divided and reunited in the faith
• the healing of the sick